Varkala

Dearest readers, welcome to the very first blog post of ‘So Long London’. We’ve said our farewells, filled our last hot water bottles and braved a final walk to the Nisa Local in the cold British winter for the last time in a long time. Finally our long anticipated Asia trip has begun.

We begin in India’s most south-westerly state, Kerala; more specifically in Varkala, a small town perched on some dramatic red cliffs above a pretty stunning beach. It’s the perfect place to acclimatise and recover from jet lag, but I’m pleased to report we’ve done some light adventuring and seen some excellent wildlife too.

On a side note, it hasn’t sunk in at all that we’ve started a 6 month adventure. It still feels like we’re just on holiday. I don’t know how to feel about that or when, how or if it will change. We’ll keep you updated.

When most people think of India, they envision Rajasthan, the Northern desert state, filled with bustling markets, striking forts and enormous palaces with intricate architecture. That’s all well and good, and we’ll get there (hopefully), but Kerala ain’t like that. Kerala is about the nature. Whether that be the famed backwaters, a pristine beach or the hill stations in the Western Ghats mountain range, Kerala is much more of lush green than yellowy-reddish Rajasthan. Apart from the beaches which I can confirm are in fact yellow as you might expect. Also the cliff in Varkala is red. OK, it’s pretty yellowy-reddish here too I suppose.

Day 1 (of about 180) – Varkala

It was so exciting arriving into India. Our taxi from Trivandrum airport left in the dark of 5.30am and the sun rose, revealing palm trees and early risers as we drove to our homestay in Varkala arriving about an hour later. Our delightful host Damini had sorted us out with an early check-in and sweetly left a video for us on WhatsApp describing how to get into our room when we arrived. Having travelled for nearly 20 hours without much sleep, we slumped straight into bed and were woken by our 11am alarm. The sun was shining, it was REALLY hot, and we had finally arrived.

We wandered into town and selected a fairly random cafe from the range of options available on Varkala’s hippie clifftop high-street. We ordered iced coffees, mango lassis and paneer curries with rice and chapattis. It was pure heaven. The food is ridiculously good. We’re yet to have a meal that isn’t mouth-wateringly delicious. Words cannot explain.

We sat overlooking Varkala beach, the main event, and decided we’d need to go down there and check it out. With full stomachs, we picked one of the three or four staircases that lead steeply down the cliff and found ourselves on soft golden sand, with stray dog gangs meandering around and a fair few tourists enjoying the beach under umbrellas. The beach is enormous and the sea was inviting. We decided to nip back to the homestay, grab our beach towels, swimsuits and e-readers, and spend the afternoon here swimming and reading.

Our first ventures into the Arabian Sea have been lovely and warm. Though at times dangerous to swim far out here here in Varkala, a paddle into the shallows is safe, more so under the watchful eyes of the very enthusiastic whistle wielding lifeguards. We swam and read and I tried to take pictures of the many kites who fly in abundance overhead. There were a few other tourists here, both international and domestic, but there was plenty of space for everyone on the beach and in the sea to spread out. It seemed, in fact, a beach too big to really fill out, or seem crowded. We would be proven wrong on that front, the following day.

While being tremendously hot with no cloud cover in evidence, there is often a breeze, so sitting in the cover of a cafe roof or under a beach umbrella, the heat is quite manageable. However, after a couple of hours of chilling on the beach, we were ready for a cold shower at our homestay and to hunt out an even colder beer in the clifftop cafes.

It’s unclear why the cafes sell beer somewhat covertly, as Kerala isn’t a dry state, but they pour them in little decorative tankards or wrap them in paper. Apparently it was harder to obtain a few years ago, but now quite a lot of the restaurants and bars sell beer and do so quite openly. So it wasn’t too hard to get a seat at the cliff front with a beer and watch the sunset which was… anticlimactic. The sky so far here has been hazy, which makes for a lovely melding of the sea and sky in the daytime, with no distinctive horizon line, but has made for a couple of pretty lacklustre sunsets. The sky stayed a hazy blue, the sun itself growing more orange and then, a good 30 mins from actually hitting the horizon, it disappeared behind a distant cloud we couldn’t see and that was that. This has happened twice in a row now, so we’re hopeful this is a weather thing and not a geographic feature of the western coast of India.

Day 2 – Varkala

We started day 2 with a plan. Hire a scooter, breakfast on Varkala’s quieter, romantic South Cliff, then head further south to Ponnomthuruthu aka Golden Island, a nearby backwater lake with an island in the middle that holds a Hindu temple.

We hired a lovely scooter from our even lovelier homestay host and set off. It was great to be scooting again after so long, it’s so fun. After navigating some fairly tricky town traffic and some backroads, we arrived at the grammatically challenged ‘Trip is Life’ cafe, which was upmarket backpacker all over, with smoothie bowls and latte art abound. I didn’t complain, and we sat right above the South Beach and thought how peaceful and inviting it looked, and started planning when we might visit.

Twenty exhilarating scooting minutes later, we were at the kayaking spot we’d researched and, after discussion with the guide, decided that rather than take a motorboat and scare the birds away, pollute the lake and generally be a nuisance, that he and I would share a two person kayak so he could boat me around while I photographed, not paddling at all like some sort of prince, while Billie was left to paddle her own one person canoe like a common fool. I felt bad about this… but not bad enough to, you know, not do it.

The lake was beautiful and serene, and the bird life was simply amazing. Billie, as usual, was eagle eyed and spotted a distant kingfisher before the guide (who was actively seeking them out for us) as well as many other birdies. All my errant attempts to photograph distant Brahminy Kites on Varkala beach went out the window as they sat around in trees and swooped around us in abundance. I’m super happy with how the below pics came out, all taken within an hour and a half or so on the lake. Sadly a perfect kingfisher pic eludes me still, but I’m hopeful that the backwaters of Munroe Island, our next stop, will provide me with opportunities.

We stopped halfway through to see a Hindu temple which we wouldn’t have been allowed in anyway but was closed. We looked at it from outside the fence and whilst colourful, it wasn’t much to write home about we thought… though I suppose here I am doing exactly that!

We headed back to the shore and our scooty and congratulated ourselves on a great expedition before heading back to Varkala for lunch. We’d been recommended a very local place for home cooked Keralan style thali; it did not disappoint, and just when when I’d finally conquered mine, the man came over and dolloped a load more on my banana leaf, so I obliged him by polishing that off too.

At this point, we’d been asking for cutlery in most places, but I’m proud to say that since then I’ve polished off many a thali using just my right hand – a mean feat as a left hander, let me tell you. It gets very warm and soggy but once you get over that and get a bit of technique down it’s not too bad.

We decided to have sunset down on the beach this evening, hoping to get more than a hazy blob disappearing halfway down the sky. As we arrived at the clifftop and looked down upon the beach we were stunned to see it completely packed out. Hundreds of people all down its length, so many in the sea, splashing around, hugging, being silly. It was nice but definitely too crowded to really enjoy beach time. Luckily, the sunset did the same thing as the previous night and so we didn’t have to hang around much. We realised later that it was because it was Saturday, and so loads of Keralan tourists came from the nearby towns and cities (we presume) to enjoy the beach.

Day 3 – Varkala

Day 3 was a big chill day. When you’re travelling for six months like us tough cookies, you’ve got to know when to rest up. Admittedly, three days in is quite pathetic, but we came here to acclimatise god damn it, so that’s what we did! Billie went to do yoga and I went to meet her at a cafe in town for brekkie after. We wanted to go and sit on the beach and read our books but two things prevented us from anything more than a quick dip. One, it was crazy hot. Like, really sunny and hot, sweat streaming in rivulets down nooks and crannies you don’t want it to. Two, we were embarrassingly sunburnt from the kayak trip the day before. For some reason I thought my arms were immune to sunburn and I also didn’t cream up my feet/ankles which have redenned quite grossly since. Billie’s arms also got hit in some patches she’d missed with the sunscreen. The addition of searing hot sun to this existing sunburn was not an awfully pleasant sensation, so we had what was a very lovely dip, then went back to our homestay to sit under our fan, write this blog, edit photos, research travel, read books etc.

We went out to the beach again later though, when clouds had arrived and the wind had shown up to the party too. We walked further down the beach and found an entire section of Varkala we had no idea existed. There were loads of Indian tourists, shops and cafes, and a busy street which as we walked down it, large numbers of Indian tourists started arriving almost in a crowd down the street, I figured multiple busloads? Rickshaws appeared as if from nowhere, got in a traffic jam and were honking and suddenly it was all quite busy and loud – we’d heard about this India! Everyone was looking at us and I was just taking lots of pics because it was pretty visually exciting. We didn’t actually need to go this way, so we soon joined the flow back to the beach and made our way home to get ready for dinner. It was a quite exciting taste of what is to come though. 

Most evenings in Varkala we would eat and then browse some of the shops on the clifftop street. There are lots of textiles shops, which are most interesting. The silk rugs are amazingly beautiful, the cashmere incredibly soft. There are some cool designs we like both contemporary and traditional, but for the most part will wait till a bit later in the trip before we burden ourselves with house furnishings… Also Varkala gets pretty vibey in the evening, lights come on and the bars and cafes turn off their yogi sitar playlists and start pumping out some party hits or live music, with highly varied degrees of talent involved. Not all of it is like that, though, and it’s not overwhelming – there’s room for a romantic meal and some peace and quiet, which was our preference.

Day 4 – Varkala

We’d worked out that we needed to make the most of the cool mornings, so our plan today was to get up early and go on a walk to Kappil Beach, some 7 km north up the coast. We’d heard that you just follow the coastal path all the way there, and getting a rickshaw back was easy at the end, when it would be hot again.

We set off and, immediately, the clifftop street with all the shops and cafes on it turned into a quiet, lush walkway atop the cliff and the views were amazing. The palm trees surrounded us, the air was cool and we just had to keep stopping for pictures because the views were so good. The white beaches, the red cliffs and the green palm trees and bushes all around all work together beautifully and there’s also this soft haze all around – it’s like nowhere we’ve seen before.

We passed some interesting scenes. A group of about 20 fisherman pulling in a huge net that we’re pretty sure was fairly far out at sea initially. A small crowd of people had gathered around to see what the catch was, but more entertaining was seeing them all work together, shouting instructions at each other. Billie thinks they caught nothing (!) which would be a lot of effort for nothing, but I suppose must happen sometimes. We saw another net being pulled in further down the beach, when we had breakfast, and loads of kites were circling and divebombing, so perhaps they’d had a more successful haul.

We also passed various resorts, in some cases passing right through them as they’d built on the coastal path, but still had access through. It was fun to compare them, and we also saw quite a few developments, some of which looked very nicely done. Varkala has really cemented itself on most itineraries in Kerala so I think the development is spreading round to the local areas too.

We eventually arrived at Kappil Beach, which has a small fishing cove with loads of colourful boats and small shack-like buildings at the back of the beach, which I think were fisherman’s homes but can’t be sure. There was a fancy, shiny John Deere tractor puling boats around which looked a bit out of place on this rustic beach!

Beyond this, was pristine, completely empty beach. Deserted! We saw maybe three people in the hour we spent there. We swam in the cooling sea, which was much needed as it was starting to get HOT again. We found a friendly rickshaw driver nearby on the main road who brought us back to our homestay to cool down under a cold shower.

For lunch we went back to our favourite extremely cheap traditional thali place and I thought I’d go for fish fry, which is something I had seen quite a few Indian people order there. I chose a red snapper, which they spice up and fry in banana leaves – it was crispy on the outside and beautifully soft on the inside. Scrummy!

Stuffed, we headed to the beach, with an umbrella and loungers for comfort. It was much quieter than previous days, being a Monday, but it was still fun to watch some of the Indian tourists enjoying the beach. They often go in fully clothed, sometimes in jeans and a hoodie (which I frankly find blasphemous) and sometimes in a group will hold hands and jump into the oncoming crashing waves, being knocked over, all laughing – it feels very different to how us Brits enjoy the beach, and I reckon they do it better here, other than the quite unacceptable wearing of jeans into the sea on a boiling hot day. Yuk!

Most importantly it was becoming apparent we were going to get a proper sunset! Finally, the horizon was sharp, the haze dissipated, and some clouds in the sky promised the light should get interesting. We abandoned our loungers for a quiet spot closer to the water and sat on the sand and watched the sun set beautifully into the sea. It was great we managed to get on here on our last night before we leave the coast, albeit only for four days!

I’m writing now from the Holy Rabbit cafe in Varkala on what is technically Day 5. We’re drinking homemade lemonade soda, chai tea, coconut and banana smoothies and have booked ourselves an ayurvedic massage for the afternoon. At 6, we’ll be getting our first Indian train to Munrotoruttu, which should be an adventure in itself. We’ll cover that in the next blog! That’s it for now – in the next edition we’ll explore Munroe Island, our destination of choice to experience the famous backwaters, synonymous with Kerala. Expect lots of pictures of Billie in a canoe and plenty of birds – so the usual. See you next time!

Here are some pics that didn’t make it: